Born on May
3, 1913, in Independence, Kansas, William Motter Inge was the
youngest of five children. He would get his first taste of the
theatre at an early age. The local boy scout troupe, of which
Inge was a member, held its weekly meetings in a Civic Center
which boasted a 2000 seat theater, and the boys were often invited
to sit in the balcony after their meetings and watch the touring
shows which passed through town for one night stands on their
way from Kansas City, Missouri to Tulsa Oklahoma.

The small town of Independence had a profound influence on
the young Inge, and he would later attribute his understanding
of human behavior to growing up in this small town environment.
"I've often wondered how people raised in our great cities
ever develop any knowledge of humankind. People who grow up in
small towns get to know each other so much more closely than
they do in cities." Inge would later use this knowledge
of small town life in many his plays, most of which revolve around
characters who are clearly products of small towns just like
Independence.

Inge was educated at the University of Kansas at Lawrence
where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Speech and
Drama in 1935. After graduation and a brief attempt at post graduate
studies, he worked a variety of jobs including highway laborer,
news announcer, and high school teacher, before returning to
school and earning a Master of Arts Degree from the George Peabody
College for Teachers in 1943. Upon earning his Masters, Inge
moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he landed a job as the drama
and music critic for the St. Louis Times. During the course of
his duties at the Times, Inge was fortunate enough to come into
contact with Tennessee Williams who invited
the young critic to attend with him a production of The Glass
Menagerie. Inge was so inspired by Williams' play that he
decided to try his hand as a playwright. After completing his
first script, Farther Off from Heaven (1947), Inge sent
a copy to Williams who recommended it for production. The play
was produced by Margo Jones in Dallas, Texas.

Inge's next literary effort, Come Back, Little Sheba
(1950) earned him the title of "most promising playwright
of the 1950 Broadway season", but his career was only beginning
to gain momentum. He followed this success with Picnic
(1952) which won him a Pulitzer Prize, the Drama Critics Circle
Award, the Outer Circle Award, and the Theatre Club Award. Next
came Bus Stop (1955) which he would later adapt into a
popular film starring Marilyn Monroe, and two years later, The
Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957), a reworking of his
first play, premiered on Broadway. This somewhat autobiographical
drama would come to be considered Inge's finest play. He would
later describe it as his "first cautious attempt to look
at the past, with an effort to find order and meaning in experiences
that were once too close to be seen clearly."

By this time, critics were hailing Inge as another Tennessee
Williams or . Unfortunately, his later works would not fulfill
that promise. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs was followed
by a string of box office failures including A Loss of Roses
(1960), Natural Affection (1963), Where's Daddy?
(1966), and The Last Pad (1970). Inge's only real sucess
during this period was his screenplay for Splendor in the
Grass (1961) for which he won an Acadamy Award. Convinced
that he could no longer write, the small town Inge fell into
a deep depression, and on June 10, 1973, at his home in the Hollywood
Hills, William Inge took his own life.